Human rights without language barriers: What Ukraine will gain from the ECHR Knowledge Sharing Platform

The Knowledge-Sharing Platform of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is now available in three additional languages that are not official Council of Europe languages: Ukrainian, Romanian, and Turkish.

For 300 million people residing in the Council of Europe member states, this has facilitated access in their native languages to a unique resource previously available only in English and French.

Why is this significant for Ukraine?

Throughout its more than 65 years of operation, the ECHR has amassed a substantial body of legal precedent regarding the interpretation of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereinafter – the Convention), formulating important, unique doctrines that effectively underpin international human rights law and serve as a cornerstone of modern European identity.

The Court’s case law is continuously evolving.

The Court formulates conclusions on a wide range of social issues. Some of these issues, such as social networks and climate change, were previously non-existent. Consequently, the Court occasionally clarifies, and less frequently, modifies its legal positions.

To date, tens of thousands of Court decisions have been published, and their number continues to grow. Although the texts of these decisions are accessible in the electronic database HUDOC, tracking the Court’s case law and comprehending the decisions remains challenging.

Therefore, the ECHR is developing new tools to ensure that legal practitioners from Council of Europe member states are informed about the Court’s stance on specific matters. More importantly, it aims to clarify the requirements imposed on states in particular situations, specifically how they must act to uphold the human rights guaranteed by the Convention.

To facilitate access to this information, the ECHR has created and continuously updates article-by-article guides, which systematize its case law concerning each article of the Convention (for example, the Guide on Article 2 of the Convention concerning the right to life). The Court also produces other thematic guides, addressing topics such as citizenship and discrimination in access to education. The platform, in turn, provides access to the ECHR’s core analytical resources, including these guides and other reference materials.

This systematization not only significantly streamlines the search for information accumulated over decades but also enables the acquisition of structured knowledge regarding the ECHR’s case law.

For Ukraine and Ukrainian specialists, the issue stemmed from the fact that these materials were only partially translated into Ukrainian. Translation efforts were highly sporadic and failed to account for the aforementioned changes in reality.

For instance, an international aid project or institution undertook the initiative to translate a specific guide into Ukrainian over a decade ago. While this was beneficial, the Court’s current practice involves regularly updating such guides, sometimes up to three times annually. However, no provision was made for the translation of these updates, resulting in the original version becoming significantly outdated, despite potentially being perceived as current.

The situation is now set to change.

The concept of translating the Knowledge Sharing Platform was realized through collaboration between the European Court of Human Rights and the Ukrainian Supreme Court, which, in ongoing communication with the ECHR, will ensure the continuous updating of all information in Ukrainian. Consequently, the problems arising from the sporadic nature of translations are being resolved, and this activity will now be conducted systematically.

The selection of languages for the Platform’s primary translation is not arbitrary.

These are the languages of the states against which the ECHR currently receives the highest volume of complaints: Turkey, Ukraine, and Romania.

This point is crucial for understanding the bigger picture behind the Platform’s operation. By improving access to its case law and fostering a deeper understanding at the national level, the ECHR aims to implement the principle of subsidiarity, whereby it assumes an auxiliary (supplementary) role in ensuring Council of Europe member states’ adherence to the rights guaranteed by the Convention.

Conversely, the primary responsibility rests with the state itself – its institutions, particularly courts, which must be guided by the Convention and the ECHR’s case law in their work.

This allows for the articulation of a shared responsibility between national and European institutions in human rights protection, the existence of a unified legal space, and the development of a common European legal culture.

The removal of language barriers facilitates the seamless dissemination of this culture across diverse legal systems, thereby expediting the path towards human rights compliance.

The advancement of such a legal culture in Ukraine is pivotal to the success of its European integration, and therefore, access to the Platform in Ukrainian can significantly contribute to this objective.

eurointegration.com.ua